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      Syl Johnson, Soul Singer With a Cult Following, Dies at 85

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      He released dozens of records on an array of labels across five decades, and his work was heavily sampled by rappers. He enjoyed a career revival in his 70s.Syl Johnson, a Chicago soul singer and guitarist who built a cult following for his raw sound on 1960s songs like “Is It Because I’m Black” and, decades later, was heavily sampled by rappers, died on Sunday in Mableton, Ga., at the home of one of his daughters. He was 85.The cause was congestive heart failure, his daughter Syleecia Thompson said.Although never a chart-topping star, Mr. Johnson was beloved by record collectors and hip-hop producers for the driving power of his songs, and for a versatile vocal style that could match James Brown’s grunting gusto or Al Green’s lovelorn keening. He released dozens of singles and albums on an array of record labels across five decades, and he enjoyed a career revival in his 70s after an exhaustively researched boxed set, “Complete Mythology” (2010), introduced his work to a new generation.Mr. Johnson was also one of soul music’s most brazen and entertaining raconteurs, entrancing fans and journalists with his braggadocio and his tales of the music business’s underside. He proclaimed himself a “multifaceted genius” and compared himself favorably to giants of the genre like Mr. Brown, Mr. Green and Marvin Gaye.Mr. Johnson in an undated publicity photo. Although never a chart-topping star, he was beloved by record collectors and hip-hop producers for the driving power of his songs and his versatile vocal style.When Mr. Johnson’s performing career began slowing down in the 1980s, he opened a seafood restaurant in Chicago, invested in real estate and found a lucrative side business seeking out his royalties. Grooves and stray growls from tracks like “Different Strokes” (1967) and “Is It Because I’m Black” (1969) had become go-to samples in hip-hop, used hundreds of times by artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Whodini, Public Enemy, Kid Rock and N.W.A; even Michael Jackson used some of Mr. Johnson’s music.For help hunting down unauthorized samples, Mr. Johnson enlisted his children and their friends.“He would tell people in the neighborhood, ‘If you find any rapper who has sampled my music, I will pay you,’” Ms. Thompson told The New York Times in 2010. “And so all the kids, we would go buy cassettes and listen to see if we could hear his ‘wow!’ and his ‘aw!’”Mr. Johnson went after those royalties, sometimes through litigation. In recent years, his targets have included Jay-Z and Kanye West, who settled a case with Mr. Johnson in 2012.“I’m sitting in the house that Wu-Tang built with their money,” Mr. Johnson told The Times.Mr. Johnson was one of soul music’s most brazen and entertaining raconteurs, entrancing fans and journalists with his braggadocio and his tales of the music business’s underside.via The Numero GroupHe was born Sylvester Thompson on July 1, 1936, near Holly Springs, Miss., the sixth child of Samuel and Erlie Thompson, who farmed cotton and corn. Samuel Thompson sang at a local church and played the harmonica, and Sylvester and his older brothers Jimmy and Mack all took up the guitar. By 1950, the family had moved to Chicago.By the late 1950s, Sylvester was accompanying blues players like Junior Wells and Jimmy Reed, and in 1959 his first single, “Teardrops,” with echoes of the R&B crooner Jackie Wilson, was released under the name Syl Johnson on the Federal label. His stage name was chosen by Syd Nathan, the impresario behind King Records, of which Federal was a subsidiary.Mr. Johnson’s brothers also had extensive careers in music. Mack Thompson, a bassist and guitarist, died in 1991. Jimmy Johnson became a prominent blues guitarist in Chicago and died on Jan. 31 at age 93.Syl Johnson released singles on a variety of labels throughout the 1960s, with limited success, before signing with Twilight Records in 1967. Songs he recorded for the label like “Come On Sock It to Me,” “Dresses Too Short” and “Different Strokes,” with their gritty funk grooves and powerful vocals, raised his profile. “Different Strokes” — whose frequently sampled opening features Mr. Johnson’s deep grunts alongside giggles from the singer Minnie Riperton — reached No. 17 on Billboard’s R&B chart. (After learning that another label already owned that name, Twilight Records eventually rechristened itself Twinight.)“Is It Because I’m Black,” written as a response to the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., added a note of bitter social commentary. “Something is holding me back,” he sang. “Is it because I’m Black?”In 1971, Mr. Johnson signed to Hi Records in Memphis, Al Green’s home, where he worked with Willie Mitchell, the label’s house producer. Mr. Johnson’s time there — his output included a cover of Mr. Green’s “Take Me to the River” in 1975 — gave him perhaps his greatest exposure, though he later said he wished he had continued to record in Chicago.Mr. Johnson in performance at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn in 2009.Piotr Redlinski for The New York TimesHe continued recording into the 2000s, including an album with his brother Jimmy called “Two Johnsons Are Better Than One.” But he had mostly retired from music when he was approached in 2006 by the Numero Group, a Chicago label known for its extensive research, about a reissue project. Distrustful of record companies, he rebuffed the company for nearly four years.When he finally agreed, the label produced a six-LP, four-CD monolith with crisp historical photos and detailed liner notes. The boxed set cemented Mr. Johnson’s legacy and established Numero’s credentials as an authoritative outlet.“There is no Numero without Syl Johnson,” said Ken Shipley, one of the founders of the label, which has continued to represent Mr. Johnson as the owner of his music publishing rights and most of his recordings.In 2015, Mr. Johnson was the subject of a documentary, “Any Way the Wind Blows,” directed by Rob Hatch-Miller.In addition to his daughter Syleecia, Mr. Johnson’s survivors include three other daughters, Sylette DeBois, Syleena Johnson and Michelle Thompson; a son, Anthony Thompson; two sisters, Vivian and Marva Thompson; and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Mr. Johnson could be bitter in recounting his experiences with the music industry, but in later years he often expressed gratitude for being given another chance to make his mark.“Back in the day I didn’t get the proper chance, like a lot of people,” he told The Times after “Complete Mythology” came out.“But I didn’t drop out of my dreams,” he added, “and now these people went back and picked it up and said, ‘This is gold right here, man, you missed the gold.’ And I think that once you check it out, you’ll like it.” More

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      Kamasi Washington Blasts Into a Fresh Era, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Koffee, Lucy Dacus, Sasami and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Kamasi Washington, ‘The Garden Path’ (Live on ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’)The Los Angeles-based saxophonist and spiritual-jazz revivalist Kamasi Washington, 40, made his American late-night TV debut this week, performing on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” With over a dozen instrumentalists and singers arrayed around him onstage, all draped in desert whites and golds, he presented a new composition, “The Garden Path.” Washington’s basic musical components haven’t changed since the release of “The Epic,” his breakout album: polyrhythmic funk and rock beats; a full blast of horns over a meaty rhythm section; scant harmonic or melodic movement in the song’s theme. The biggest source of magnetism here came from downstage right: It’s the voice of Dwight Trible, a Los Angeles jazz fixture, whose lush baritone carries the plangent lyrics in harmony with Patrice Quinn: “Bright minds with dark eyes/Speak loud words, tell sweet lies/Lost without a trace of a way/To get out of this misery.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKoffee, ‘Pull Up’The Jamaican firebrand Koffee, who made history as the youngest person and first woman to win a Grammy for best reggae album in 2020, has good reason to arrive triumphantly on “Pull Up,” the beatific new single from her long-awaited debut album, “Gifted,” due March 25. A liquid beat from the masterful British-Ghanian producer Jae5 trickles between Afrobeats and reggae; in the video, Koffee grins from ear to ear, mouth full of braces, as she leans out of the window of a drifting car and lets the barbs flow: “Zero to a hundred in two/Yeah, so me flex pon you.” ISABELIA HERRERAMachine Gun Kelly featuring Willow, ‘Emo Girl’A love song in which both MGK and Willow bemoan falling for the emo girl who’s just out of reach, sulkily celebrating her the way songs in the 1950s serenaded the prom queen. If this doesn’t inspire and soundtrack a Netflix awkward-teen meet-cute rom-com by this time next year I’m canceling my subscription! JON CARAMANICALucy Dacus, ‘Kissing Lessons’The songs on Lucy Dacus’s 2021 album, “Home Video,” revisited childhood memories, many of them fraught with difficult self-discoveries. “Kissing Lessons” is more cheerful. It’s a two-minute pop-punk reminiscence of being in second grade and learning to kiss from a girl who was a year older, sharing childish thoughts about what grown-up romance would be: a fond, brief, revelatory interlude. PARELESTate McRae, ‘She’s All I Wanna Be’Tate McRae has a dry, wiry voice that’s well suited to this convincingly mopey and skittish punk-pop thumper about envy: “If you say she’s nothing to worry about/then why’d you close your eyes when you said it out loud?” CARAMANICASasami, ‘Call Me Home’With each single she releases from her upcoming album “Squeeze,” the Los Angeles artist Sasami Ashworth shows off another subgenre of rock that she can pull off with effortless and idiosyncratic style. “Say It” was an industrial banger, “Skin a Rat” flirted with metal and “The Greatest” indulged in some slow-burning garage rock. Her latest, “Call Me Home,” is a lush, nostalgic blast of AM-radio psychedelia, suggesting that she’s not yet done revealing the many sides of her eclectic talent. LINDSAY ZOLADZArlo Parks, ‘Softly’The track cruises along easily, with a light boom-bap beat, a sprinkling of piano notes, leisurely guitar chords and a canopy of strings. Arlo Parks tries to keep her voice nonchalant. But she’s all too aware that her romance is ending: “Has something changed? Have I just missed the memo?” She’s shattered, and all she can do is beg her lover to “Break it to me softly.” PARELESKassi Ashton, ‘Dates in Pickup Trucks’A gifted soul vocalist hiding out in country music, Kassi Ashton sings with resonant wistfulness on “Dates in Pickup Trucks,” a lovely breeze of a song about what to do when there’s absolutely nothing to do. CARAMANICAObongjayar, ‘Try’Obongjayar is Steven Umoh, who was born in Nigeria and moved to London in his teens. He won’t be pinned down; “Try,” from his debut album due in May, jump-cuts among spacious, quasi-orchestral ambience to gently crooned electronic R&B to deep-growl toasting to a big, yearning chorus with an Afrobeats undertow. “All we do is try,” he sings, and there’s palpable ambition in every stylistic leap. PARELESMy Idea, ‘Cry Mfer’My Idea is a duo of two prolific New York-based indie musicians who also happen to be friends: Nate Amos of the experimental dance band Water for Your Eyes, and Lily Konigsberg of the art-rockers Palberta (who also released an excellent solo album, “Lily We Need to Talk Now,” late last year). “Cry Mfer,” from a forthcoming album of the same name, is less confrontational than its title might suggest, revolving around a looping, hypnotic track and Konigsberg’s reflections on a collapsing relationship: “I could be the one that makes you cry, I could be the one that makes you — ouch.” ZOLADZIlluminati Hotties, ‘Sandwich Sharer’To describe the genre of her eclectic project Illuminati Hotties — or perhaps just to thumb her nose at the absurdity of genre itself — Sarah Tudzin coined a term: “tenderpunk.” “Sandwich Sharer,” her latest one-off single, oscillates restlessly between those two adjectives. At first it seems like this song will showcase the softer side of Illuminati Hotties: “Restarted kissing,” she begins over a dramatically strummed, slow-motion chord. But before the listener can gain footing at that tempo, Tudzin suddenly kicks the song into a spunky gallop, punctuated by her humorously offbeat lyrics (“You thought I was bleeding but that’s just my spit!”). Tudzin often paints vivid and lifelike portraits of modern human relationships, and the shape-shifting nature of “Sandwich Sharer” captures the feel of one that’s constantly in flux. ZOLADZWhatever the Weather, ‘17ºC’Whatever the Weather is a new pseudonym for the English electronic musician Loraine James, who thrives on concocting dance-floor rhythms that she skews with gaps, interjections and disorienting shifts of texture. “17ºC” — from a coming album of tracks named after temperatures — ratchets up a beat from hisses, thumps, boops and blips, but continually disassembles and reformulates it: with hollows of reverb, with street and party noises, with disembodied vocal syllables, with clusters of keyboard tones and with sudden drum-machine salvos. The pulse persists, even when it’s only implied. PARELESAyver, ‘Reconciliación Con la Vida’For nearly two decades, the Peruvian label Buh Records has showcased the esoteric and avant-garde sounds of Latin America, from forgotten electroacoustic legends of the ’70s to contemporary noise artists. That mission returns in its latest release, a compilation of new faces in the Peruvian electronic scene. “Reconciliación Con la Vida,” its standout, bottles a wide spectrum of emotional textures. Lying somewhere between profound tragedy and wistful wonder, tender piano keys and sweeping string crescendos bleed into trembling beauty. It is intimate but heart-rending, like the soft caress of a lover you may never see again. HERRERAPeter Brötzmann, Milford Graves, William Parker, ‘Historic Music Past Tense Future, Side C’“Historic Music Past Tense Future” is the first in a planned series of albums on the Black Editions Archive label that will exhume previously unreleased live recordings of Milford Graves, the drummer and polymath who died last year amid a late-career re-emergence. This is the first album featuring Graves alongside the saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and the bassist William Parker — all lions of the avant-garde. The third of four freely improvised, quarter-hour-long tracks, “Side C” starts as a quiet conversation between Graves and Parker, then gets lit up by Brötzmann’s tone-smashing saxophone. Midway through, Graves guides things back down to a simmer, Brötzmann drops out, and Parker begins to play a repetitive, rhythmic drone, almost like something you’d hear in Gnawa ritual. Stroking his deeply resonant, hand-altered drums, Graves brings the energy back up slowly by playing around Parker’s plucks, adding rhythms that keep his drone dancing. RUSSONELLO More

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      Rosa Lee Hawkins, Youngest Member of the Dixie Cups, Dies at 76

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      The singing group’s debut single, “Chapel of Love,” rose to the top of the charts in 1964, displacing the Beatles’ “Love Me Do.”Rosa Lee Hawkins, the youngest member of the musical trio the Dixie Cups, whose hit single “Chapel of Love” reached No. 1 on the Billboard 100 in 1964, died on Tuesday in Tampa, Fla. She was 76.The cause was internal bleeding resulting from complications during surgery at Tampa General Hospital, said her sister Barbara Ann Hawkins, who was also a member of the group, along with Joan Marie Johnson, who died in 2016 at 72.The Dixie Cups epitomized the harmonizing sound of the 1960s girl group. “Chapel of Love,” their debut single and most well-known song, quickly replaced the Beatles’ “Love Me Do” as No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1964. It was later heard on the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam War film, “Full Metal Jacket.”Rosa Lee Hawkins was born on Oct. 23, 1945, in New Orleans to Hartzell Hawkins, a self-employed carpenter, and Lucille (Merette) Hawkins, a state worker who registered voters.While in high school in 1963, Barbara brought Rosa along to sing with her and Joan Marie in a high school talent show. The trio initially called themselves the Meltones, only to discover later that the name had already been taken. Since they were from the land of Dixie, and “cups are cute,” Barbara said in an interview, they came up with the name Dixie Cups (playing on the name of the popular paper cup).Joan later discovered that the Hawkins sisters were actually her cousins.While they did not win the talent show, a talent scout in the audience, impressed by their rich harmonies, invited the group, along with other Louisiana musicians, to perform for Red Bird Records. The Dixie Cups sang “Iko Iko,” a song that was traditionally sung during Mardi Gras and that was a favorite of the Hawkins sisters’ grandmother. They signed a recording contract soon after.The Dixie Cups received two Gold Records, for “Chapel of Love” and another hit, “People Say.” They were inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2007.The group recorded a total of four albums, their last in 2011. Ms. Johnson, ill with sickle-cell anemia and weary from touring, left the group and was replaced by a number of singers through the years. The Hawkins sisters remained, though, and kept singing just as they did in high school, with harmonies as vibrant as ever.“When the audience smiled and applauded, it made her happy because she knew she put a smile on their faces, if only for that time,” Barbara said of her younger sister.In addition to Barbara, Ms. Hawkins is survived by another sister, Shirley; a son, Eric Blanc; and two grandchildren. More

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      James Mtume, Whose ‘Juicy Fruit’ Became a Hip-Hop Beat, Dies at 76

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      In a wide-ranging career, he went from playing percussion with Miles Davis to writing and producing sleek R&B to a long stint on political talk radio.James Mtume, the musician, songwriter, producer, bandleader and talk-radio host whose 1983 hit “Juicy Fruit” has been sampled in more than 100 songs, died on Sunday at his home in South Orange, N.J. He was 76.His cause was cancer, his family said.Mr. Mtume started his career as a jazz percussionist. He was in Miles Davis’s band for the first half of the 1970s, appearing on Davis’s landmark 1972 jazz-funk album “On the Corner” and its successors.But in the late ’70s he pivoted to R&B: He co-wrote hits for Roberta Flack and Stephanie Mills, produced albums and formed a group, Mtume, which had major hits with his songs “Juicy Fruit” and “You, Me and He.” His sparse, sputtering electronic beat for “Juicy Fruit” gained an extensive second life in hip-hop when it was sampled on the debut single by the Notorious B.I.G., “Juicy,” a No. 1 rap hit in 1994.Mr. Mtume was born James Forman on Jan. 3, 1946, in Philadelphia. His father was the jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath, but he was raised by his stepfather, James Forman, a jazz pianist also known as Hen Gates who had played with Charlie Parker, and his mother, Bertha Forman, a homemaker.Jazz musicians including Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Dinah Washington and John Coltrane were frequent family visitors, and the young James Forman grew up playing piano and percussion; his biological uncle, the jazz drummer Albert (Tootie) Heath, gave him his first conga drum.He was a champion swimmer in high school, winning the Middle Atlantic title for backstroke, and attended Pasadena City College on an athletic scholarship.In California, he joined the US Organization, a Black nationalist cultural group that introduced the holiday Kwanzaa, and he took an African last name: Mtume, Swahili for messenger. He also turned seriously to music.In 1969, Albert Heath recorded four modal, Afrocentric jazz compositions by Mr. Mtume on his album “Kawaida,” featuring Mr. Mtume on congas alongside Herbie Hancock on piano, Don Cherry on trumpet and Jimmy Heath on saxophones. Mr. Mtume also worked with Art Farmer, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard and Gato Barbieri.He joined Miles Davis’s band in 1971 as it was making the transition to the jagged, open-ended, rhythm-dominated funk of “On the Corner.” In an extensive Red Bull Music Academy interview in 2014, Mr. Mtume said that Davis had taught him the value of space and concision — “the appreciation for abbreviation.” He worked with Davis until 1975, touring and appearing on the albums “Big Fun,” “Dark Magus,” “Agharta,” “Pangaea” and “Get Up With It,” which included a Davis composition titled “Mtume.”Working with Davis, Mr. Mtume expanded his sound with electronic effects. “You don’t fight technology, you embrace it,” he said in 2014. “It’s like fire. It’ll burn you, or you learn how to cook with it.”In 1972, Mr. Mtume made his recording debut as a leader with “Alkebu-Lan: Land of the Blacks” on the Strata-East label, credited to the Mtume Umoja Ensemble. It opened with a spoken manifesto that praised “the role of Black music as a functional organ in the struggle for national liberation.” He released a second jazz album, “Rebirth Cycle,” in 1977.Mr. Mtume with Miles Davis in 1973. In a 2014 interview, he said Davis had taught him the value of space and concision — “the appreciation for abbreviation.” R. Brigden/Express, via Getty ImagesWhen Davis stopped performing in 1975, Mr. Mtume and the guitarist Reggie Lucas, another member of the Davis group, joined Roberta Flack’s band. Their composition “The Closer I Get to You,” which she recorded as a duet with Donny Hathaway, reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978 and was later remade by Beyoncé and Luther Vandross.They formed Mtume-Lucas Productions to write and produce songs. Among the artists they worked with were Phyllis Hyman, Teddy Pendergrass, the Spinners and Stephanie Mills, for whom they wrote the 1980 hit “Never Knew Love Like This Before,” a Grammy Award winner for best R&B song. On Instagram this week, Ms. Mills praised Mr. Mtume, writing, “He was so brilliant and an amazing music mind.”Between production jobs, Mr. Mtume and Mr. Lucas recorded with their core musicians as the group Mtume, which featured the singer Tawatha Agee. Mr. Mtume described the group’s first albums as “sophistifunk,” using plush harmonies and elaborate orchestrations.But one day, Mr. Mtume recalled, he realized that “I was playing something that sounded just like something else I had done. I got up and I walked away, and I disbanded the band, and I decided not to do any more productions.”He put together a second lineup of Mtume, without Mr. Lucas, and turned to a style he described as “neo-minimalism,” using just a handful of instruments and fewer effects. The new Mtume lineup recorded “Juicy Fruit.” At first, Mtume’s record label, Epic, dismissed the song as too slow for daytime radio, but it became a No. 1 R&B hit.The title song of Mtume’s 1984 album, “You, Me and He” — a confession of polyamory — reached No. 2 on Billboard’s R&B chart. On the group’s final album, “Theater of the Mind,” released in 1986, Mtume turned to sociopolitical commentary in songs like “Deep Freeze (Rap-a-Song) (Part 1).” That same year, Mr. Mtume wrote the score for the film “Native Son” and produced a solo album for Ms. Agee.In a radio interview in 1988, during a freewheeling era of hip-hop when samples were widely used without payment or credit, Mr. Mtume denounced hip-hop’s reliance on sampling, calling it “Memorex music” and complaining that the originators were ignored. The hip-hop group Stetsasonic responded with “Talkin’ All That Jazz,” which argued, “Rap brings back old R&B/And if we would not, people could’ve forgot.”Eventually, sampling — by then licensed and credited — would keep Mr. Mtume’s music on the radio. “Juicy Fruit” has been sampled by Alicia Keys, Warren G, Jennifer Lopez, Keyshia Cole, Faith Evans and dozens of others, and many of Mr. Mtume’s other songs and productions have made their way onto new tracks.In 1994, Mr. Mtume scored the TV series “New York Undercover.” At his urging, the show’s story lines featured a nightclub, Natalie’s, where an older generation of musicians, including B.B. King and Gladys Knight, got new TV exposure and younger performers revived old songs. During the 1990s he also produced songs for Mary J. Blige, D’Angelo, and K-Ci & Jojo.Yet by the mid-1990s, Mr. Mtume had grown dissatisfied with the music business. He moved into talk radio, and was a co-host from 1995 to 2013 on the weekly show “Open Line,” heard first on WRKS-FM (Kiss-FM) in New York and then on WBLS-FM when the stations merged, discussing politics, activism, news and culture alongside Bob Slade and Bob Pickett. Over the years, he also traveled to Cuba, Libya, Sudan and South Africa. He recorded a TED Talk in 2018, “Our Common Ground in Music,” in which he discussed “the cross-pollination of culture, politics and art.”He is survived by his wife, Kamili Mtume; his brother, Jeffrey Forman; two sons, Faulu Mtume and Richard Johnson; four daughters, Benin Mtume, Eshe King, Ife Mtume and Sanda Lee; and six grandchildren.“Pressing the boundaries. To me that’s always what it was about,” Mr. Mtume said in 2014. “Never give yourself a chance to look back, because that’s always easier. Looking forward is always harder.” More

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      The Endless Pop Shimmers of the Weeknd

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      “Dawn FM” extends and reimagines Abel Tesfaye’s fixation on perfect pop that he’s been chasing since the mid-2010s.There’s not a moment to breathe on the new album by the Weeknd, “Dawn FM” — no spaces for resolution and calm, no indications of a world outside of its borders. An uninterrupted set of iridescent megapop anthems blended like a D.J. mix, it is, as with so many things that he has made in the last decade, an all-or-nothing proposition.Since the Weeknd, born Abel Tesfaye, first arrived in 2011 with a trio of dank, sleazy mixtapes that radically reconstructed R&B, he has steadfastly, maybe even stubbornly, committed to thinking of his albums as discrete eras with evolving ideologies. And as he’s become one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, this has required both tremendous skill and a not insignificant amount of faith — in an era of microtargeting and niches that explode into ubiquity, he is choosing a far less assured top-down path.He has succeeded by remaining, even at peak saturation, enigmatic. Tesfaye, 31, is interested in world-building, and he remains obscure — at this point, evolving past strategic anonymity into full-scale character work — hiding behind hits.“Dawn FM,” his fifth major-label album, is sleek and vigorous and also, again, a light reimagining of what big-tent music might sound like now, in an era when most global stars have abandoned the concept. “Dawn FM” extends and reimagines Tesfaye’s fixation on perfect pop that he’s been pursuing since he first teamed with the hitmaker Max Martin in the mid-2010s — seven years later, he’s still chasing a deeply polished orb at the end of an infinite galaxy.What’s striking is the path he’s chosen to get there — yes, Martin is here, as are Oscar Holter and Swedish House Mafia. But Tesfaye’s true consigliere is Daniel Lopatin (a.k.a Oneohtrix Point Never), who began his career as a channeler of interstellar rumble but evolved into a soundtracker for space disco. Together, they make work that is mesmeric, both for its quality and its seamlessness. Tesfaye pulls Lopatin closer to blunt rhythm while allowing himself to get absorbed in the producer’s endless shimmers.On “Dawn FM,” they land squarely in the window between 1982 and 1984, when New York’s emergent hip-hop production was coalescing into the electro that was streaking its way into pop. This is breakdancing music, touching on everything from Afrika Bambaataa’s seminal “Planet Rock” to Man Parrish and Mantronix to the first Force M.D.s album to the tuneful Los Angeles proto-rap of Egyptian Lover and World Class Wreckin’ Cru to Maurice Starr and Arthur Baker’s early work with New Edition.What Tesfaye and Lopatin build on that foundation is ambitious. “Don’t Break My Heart” is soaringly sad, framing romantic desperation as an unescapable sonic maze. “Gasoline” dips into Depeche Mode-style hauteur for a classic Weeknd story about alluring degeneracy: “It’s 5 a.m. I’m high again/And you can see that I’m in pain/I’ve fallen into emptiness.”“How Do I Make You Love Me?” is a super-sweet version of the Michael Jackson-esque pop Tesfaye has been reaching for, as is the majestic “Take My Breath.” These songs, which appear back to back early on the album, are the best arguments for Tesfaye’s vision, and crucially, both are songs where Martin is there as an amplifying force.On “Dawn FM,” Tesfaye occasionally edges up against simu-funk, like on “Sacrifice,” which samples Alicia Myers’s dance-liberation thumper “I Want to Thank You.” And “Here We Go … Again,” which has the faintest mist of “How Deep Is Your Love” by the Bee Gees, is the album’s weakest and least characteristic moment, a lyrical jolt into the deeply specific present for a performer who is trying to make music that exists outside of time.There’s a reason no one is currently trying to emulate what Tesfaye is achieving — it requires the meticulousness of an engineer, the ego of a superstar and the scars of the deeply wounded. Done wrong, it can come off as icy and algorithmic.The album is threaded with interstitials from a fictional radio station, mainly voiced by Jim Carrey — amusing but not particularly meaningful. What does hit harder is “A Tale by Quincy,” in which the influential producer and mogul Quincy Jones relates a story about learning to grow up rough. Jones is an obvious antecedent for Tesfaye, who aspires to be an orchestrator as much as a singer and songwriter. (There are echoes of Jones’s 1981 album “The Dude” here as well.)If anything has changed for Tesfaye, it’s his relationship to dysfunction. Though there are moments — like “Sacrifice” (“The ice inside my veins will never bleed”) and “Gasoline” — that recall the louche desperation of his early albums, he’s more often the victim.“I Heard You’re Married” — which features a crisp, dexterous guest verse from Lil Wayne (“If I ain’t your husband I can’t be your hybrid”) — is about what happens when your old weapons are turned against you: “Your number in my phone I’m gon’ delete it/Girl, I’m way too grown for that deceiving.” “Is There Someone Else?” is a remarkably chill song about being a reformed cad. And he boasts about a movie-star girlfriend on “Here We Go … Again.”Perhaps the shift is an acknowledgment of the regrets that come with age and experience. Perhaps it’s because the bad guy can only be the hero for so long. Or maybe it’s just a phase. The last full song on the album is “Less Than Zero,” a nod to Bret Easton Ellis debauchery but also a slightly stripped-down song about inner sadness. It’s the only moment on this mirror ball of an album that feels truly vulnerable, and dares to peek inside: “I try to hide it, but I know you know me.”The Weeknd“Dawn FM”(XO/Republic) More

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      What We Forgot to Talk About in 2021

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherTaylor, Drake, Olivia, Adele, Billie, Lil Nas X, Sondheim, Kanye, Kacey: Popcast has covered them all in the past 12 months. In the second year of the coronavirus pandemic, pop music returned to something like normal, with big stars releasing albums and returning to the road (at least for now). There was quite a lot to talk about.On this week’s Popcast, a loose round table about some of the year’s musical high points that haven’t yet been discussed on the show: the global breakthrough of Maneskin, the ascendance of Jazmine Sullivan, the resilience of Kelly Clarkson, some left field TikTok high points and the musical stylings of Candiace Dillard of “The Real Housewives of Potomac.”Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      A Trip Through Pop, Rap and Jazz’s Past, in 27 Boxed Sets

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      Collections from labels like Fania and Armabillion, icons including Ray Charles and J Dilla, and living artists such as Beverly Glenn-Copeland and Radiohead were welcome additions this year.In an era of abundance when every day brings a deluge of new music to consume, it may seem particularly futile to turn to the past. But this year’s resurrections and recontextualizations in boxed sets and reissues gathered up what’s been forgotten or overlooked — or in some cases, what’s been dissected ad nauseam but still commands attention — and put it back at center stage. As Taylor Swift proved this year, there’s no reason the old can’t be experienced as new, too.‘Almost Famous 20th Anniversary’(UMe; multiple configurations with deluxe editions starting at $169.98)Cameron Crowe’s 2000 film, “Almost Famous,” was his fond reminiscence about writing for Rolling Stone during the hard-partying, all-access 1970s. The expanded anniversary editions are overstuffed with familiar songs alongside a few live rarities. They also include a disc of mostly folksy soundtrack instrumentals by Nancy Wilson, from Heart, and the complete recordings of the film’s invented band, Stillwater — a Led Zeppelin/Bad Company knockoff stomping through songs written by Crowe, Wilson and Peter Frampton — along with, in boxed-set style, the demo versions. (A Stillwater EP, minus the demos, is also available separately.) Stillwater’s vintage style was meticulously reconstructed — booming drums, screaming lead guitar (from Mike McCready of Pearl Jam) — with hints of meta self-consciousness in the lyrics. “It was juvenile, it was something wild,” the band shouts in “You Had to Be There.” JON PARELESArmabillion Recordz(Armabillion.com; albums start at $30)One of a handful of obscurantist rap reissue labels that have emerged in recent years, Armabillion is based in Italy but specializes in limited-run vinyl pressings of undersung gangster rap classics from around the United States, especially the South and the Bay Area. This year’s slate of releases has been impressive, among them Gank Move’s dreamy, tough-talking “Come Into My World”; Coop MC’s slinky “Home of the Killers”; Ant Banks’s essential debut album “Sittin’ on Somethin’ Phat”; and the rowdy “Straight From tha Ramp!!!” by Tec-9 (of U.N.L.V.), an early release on Cash Money Records. JON CARAMANICALouis Armstrong, ‘The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966’(Mosaic; seven CDs, $119)The period covered by this boxed set mostly fits within what’s considered to be Armstrong’s long midcareer lull, but when it comes to the creator of the modern jazz solo, even the mellow years can support a certain level of fascination. And this loving revisitation from the jazz archivalists at Mosaic spares no enthusiasm: The scholar Ricky Riccardi’s liner notes clock in at roughly 30,000 words, illustrated by 40 photographs, most of them never before seen. And the recordings — covering the full sweep of Armstrong’s studio dates for Columbia and RCA over a 20-year span — have been transferred directly from the originals and remastered. There are two discs of singles that include midsize- and large-ensemble performances, a rare duet with the German singer and film star Lotte Lenya on “Mack the Knife,” and even a promotional track, “Music to Shave By,” that Armstrong recorded on behalf of the Remington Company. Also included are his Columbia LPs from this era, plus outtakes from the sessions: “Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy”; “Satch Plays Fats” (that’s Fats Waller); and his musical-theater collaboration with Dave Brubeck, “The Real Ambassadors.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOPastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir, ‘I Shall Wear a Crown’(Numero Group; five CDs, $35; five LPs, $90)Half a century ago, T.L. Barrett was far from the only pastor in Black America — or even on the South Side of Chicago — fusing gospel standards with funk. But good luck finding anyone who did it with more flavor, more hooks or more genuine frontman flair. “I Shall Wear a Crown” pulls together the four albums and various singles Barrett released throughout the 1970s, all with his Youth for Christ Choir joined by a crackling rhythm section. The end of the ’60s was a golden moment for youth choruses on wax, with the era’s each-one-teach-one activism shining through. (See also: the Voices of East Harlem; Sister Nancy Dupree’s classroom choir in Rochester, N.Y.; and the loose group of neighborhood kids whose voices are captured on James Brown’s “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud,” from 1968, possibly helping to set off the trend.) But Barrett’s music evolved through that moment, and he kept finding new ways to use the choir. By the mid-70s, he was dealing with synthesizers and crunchy electric guitar and cosmic slow-jam textures. This is the era that provided Kanye West with one of his most brilliant “Life of Pablo” samples, “Father Stretch My Hands,” a sultry, tantalizingly slow song in multiple parts. The box’s 24-page booklet features evocative and scholarly liner notes by Aadam Keeley and Aaron Cohen shining light on what has been, in many ways, a life of bridged contradictions and extraordinary achievement. RUSSONELLOThe Beach Boys, ‘Feel Flows: The Sunflower & Surf’s Up Sessions 1969-1971’(UMe; five CDs and hardcover book, $125)The Beach Boys revisit a less-heralded era in their history in “Feel Flows.”“Sunflower” (1970) and “Surf’s Up” (1971) were the Beach Boys’ most ambitious attempts to stay relevant in the 1970s while living up to Brian Wilson’s vision of merging complex music with mass popularity. “Sunflower” celebrated the joys of music and romance; “Surf’s Up” was as topical as the Beach Boys would ever be, worrying about environmental pollution, fatal student protests and the end of youthful innocence, with lyrics that sometimes reveled in literary conundrums. The boxed set includes both of the full albums and some complete outtakes, along with concert performances, alternate versions and stripped-down instrumental and a cappella tracks. The tracks are an education for aspiring producers, unveiling elaborate arrangements and savoring every earnest nonsense syllable of the band’s defining vocal harmonies. PARELESThe Beat Farmers, ‘Tales of the New West’(Blixa Sounds; two CDs, $19.99)The debut album from the San Diego band the Beat Farmers, released in 1985, is a dynamic and sturdy roots-rock gem, with flickers of the cowpunk sound that had been coursing through the region in the years just prior. The band’s best known song from this album, “Happy Boy,” scans as a novelty in retrospect, but the rest is full of savvy guitar work, slinky, yelpy singing and a rollicking rhythm section, peaking on the uproarious and blowsy “Lost Weekend.” The reissue’s bonus disc is an assured and easeful concert recording, “Live at the Spring Valley Inn, 1983.” CARAMANICAThe Beatles, ‘Let It Be (Super Deluxe)’(Capitol; five CDs, one Blu-ray audio disc and hardcover book, $140; five LPs and hardcover book, $200)An expanded boxed set for the Beatles’ “Let It Be” includes two discs of studio conversation.Anyone who didn’t get enough Beatles outtakes, dialogue and rehearsals in Peter Jackson’s documentary “Get Back” can try the expanded boxed set of “Let It Be,” which includes a new mix of the original album and singles (including the goopy orchestral arrangements), two discs of studio music and chatter, and another of the engineer Glyn Johns’s rough 1969 mixes from the album sessions. After making elaborate, groundbreaking studio albums, for “Let It Be” the Beatles dared themselves to record live in real time in front of a film crew — no pressure — joined only by the keyboardist (and unifier) Billy Preston. As in the documentary, the outtakes contrast Paul McCartney’s goal-oriented consistency with John Lennon’s casual restlessness. The find is the 1969 mixes: more open, more revealing, sounding even more live than the original album tracks. PARELESBush Tetras, ‘Rhythm and Paranoia: The Best of Bush Tetras’(Wharf Cat Records; three LPs, $98.98; two CDs, $29.98)With their most-loved songs scattered across various 7” singles and EPs, the delightfully prickly New York art-rockers Bush Tetras are the perfect candidates for a best-of collection like “Rhythm and Paranoia,” a chronologically sequenced triple album that puts their long, rich career into proper context. Thanks to underground hits like the walking-after-midnight anthem “Too Many Creeps” from 1980 and the groovy kiss-off “You Can’t Be Funky” the following year, the group was often associated most closely with the post-punk and no wave scenes. But the latter half of this set proves that for decades it continued to evolve in surprising yet intuitive new directions, as heard on the 1996 Fugazi-like wailer “Page 18” or the billowing blues-rock of “Heart Attack” from 2012. LINDSAY ZOLADZEva Cassidy, ‘Live at Blues Alley (25th Anniversary Edition)’(Blix Street Records; two LPs, $37.98)A new Eva Cassidy reissue presents her first solo album fully remastered, in the highest fidelity available.Though the vocalist Eva Cassidy didn’t write her own songs, and could sometimes slip into an almost exact approximation of Aretha Franklin or Bonnie Raitt’s phrasing, it never made sense to question her legitimacy or intent. Cassidy’s heart was right there, laid bare in her voice. When she saved up the money to record “Live at Blues Alley,” her first solo album, in January 1996, Cassidy wasn’t even a known figure on the small Washington, D.C., music scene. Just months after it came out, she died of cancer at age 33. It would be another couple of years before she broke through to a wider audience, thanks to a posthumous compilation CD, “Songbird” (drawn partly from the “Blues Alley” recordings), and the stream of cobbled-together releases that followed. This new reissue, pressed at 45 r.p.m. onto a pair of heavyweight LPs, presents the original document fully remastered, in the highest fidelity available. RUSSONELLOWhat to Know About ‘The Beatles: Get Back’Peter Jackson’s seven-plus hour documentary series, which explores the most contested period in the band’s history, is available on Disney Plus.Re-examining How the Beatles Ended: Think you know what happened? Jackson may change your mind.Yoko Ono’s Omnipresence: The performance artist is everywhere in the film. At first it’s unnerving, then dazzling.6 Big Moments: Don’t have time to watch the full documentary? Here’s a guide to its eye-opening scenes.‘Changüí: The Sound of Guantánamo’(Petaluma; three CDs and hardcover book, $63)When he realized there were very few recordings of local, rural changüí — music for all-night neighborhood parties in Guantánamo province, at Cuba’s eastern tip — the journalist Gianluca Tramontana began making his own with a hand-held stereo recorder, capturing the music live, acoustic and unadorned. This extensive boxed set, annotated with lyrics and musicology, offers Afro-Cuban music at its most elemental and kinetic: endlessly syncopated riffs picked on a tres (Cuban guitar) backed only by percussion and the plunked bass notes of a marímbula (a box with metal prongs), topped by singers who may well be improvising rhymes, answered by backup refrains. The lyrics offer history, advice, love, pride in the changüí tradition and up-to-the-minute commentary on what’s going on at the party or in the world. More important, the percussion and tres make the music eternally danceable. PARELESRay Charles, ‘True Genius’(Tangerine; six CDs and hardcover book, $105)“True Genius” collects decades of Ray Charles’s work.For me, and others, America’s greatest male singer was Ray Charles. His voice was grainy, earthy and wise; his emotional impact was unmistakable and complex, merging pain and strength, sorrow and humor, flirtation and heartache. Of course, he was no slouch as a pianist, either. This straightforward, career-spanning compilation covers his early years as he forges his fusion of gospel, swing, blues, country and pop, though for his pivotal 1950s Atlantic singles — “Hallelujah, I Love Her So,” “I’ve Got a Woman” and “What’d I Say” — it swaps in live versions instead of the studio classics. It moves through his decades as an interpreter, when he homed in on the soul within other people’s hits, and includes a rambunctious 1972 concert set from Stockholm and latter-day duets with admirers like Willie Nelson, Norah Jones and Billy Joel. PARELESJ Dilla, ‘ Welcome 2 Detroit — The 20th Anniversary Edition’(BBE Music; 12 7” singles for $129.99)A box of 7” singles includes instrumental versions and alternate mixes of J Dilla’s 2001 debut studio LP.By the time the tastemaking Detroit hip-hop producer J Dilla released his 2001 debut studio album, “Welcome 2 Detroit,” he was already somewhere in the realm of mythos. A member of the Soulquarians and the Ummah production collectives, he was known for music that was both luscious and thumping — he was wildly influential and essentially uncopyable. (He died in 2006.) “Welcome 2 Detroit” is a musically wide-ranging album, but never thrums with anything but his particular vibration, the J Dilla feel that exists somewhere just beneath the skin. This immaculately detailed boxed set features 7” singles of the album’s songs along with instrumental versions, alternate mixes and a book detailing the making of the album. CARAMANICAWillie Dunn, ‘Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology’(Light in the Attic; two LPs, $35; MP3 download, $10)Willie Dunn (1941-2013) was a Canadian songwriter, filmmaker and Indigenous activist; this set offers just a sampling of his extensive recorded catalog. He emerged in the 1960s with songs rooted in folk and country, sometimes incorporating Indigenous instruments and melodies. His voice was a kindly but forthright baritone, with hints of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot. Dunn was a cleareyed storyteller, and in songs like “The Ballad of Crowfoot” he chronicled individual lives, historical injustices and the power and majesty of nature. PARELESBob Dylan, ‘Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 (1980-1985)’(Columbia/Legacy; five CDs, hard-bound book and memorabilia, $140)The latest excavation of Bob Dylan’s archives is from the first half of the 1980s, when he let go of the certainties of his born-again phase and returned to thornier, more enigmatic songs that still grappled with morality, love, history and responsibility on the albums “Infidels” (1983) and “Empire Burlesque” (1985). He also tried 1980s-style production, which left those albums with overblown drum sounds and a dated electronic sheen. Two discs from the 1980 sessions and rehearsals for his 1980 “Shot of Love” are mostly throwaways, except for the murky, ominous “Yes Sir, No Sir.” But the songs from sessions and tours for “Infidels” and “Empire Burlesque” offer more. The set unveils a full-band version of “Blind Willie McTell” and a boisterous, bluesy rock song that only surfaced briefly on tour in 1984, “Enough Is Enough.” It finds more vulnerable, less gimmicky versions of familiar songs, and it details the evolution — and sometimes overnight rewrites — of the songs that became “Foot of Pride” and “Tight Connection to My Heart,” a close-up of Dylan’s constant tinkering and improving. PARELESBeverly Glenn-Copeland, ‘Keyboard Fantasies’ and ‘Keyboard Fantasies Reimagined’(Transgressive; LP, CD, cassette or download, from $6.99 to $27.99)This is the latest installment of the campaign to resurrect the work of Beverly Glenn-Copeland, the Canadian new age/electronic music producer and singer whose recordings were rediscovered a few years ago. “Keyboard Fantasies,” originally released in 1986 in a limited cassette run, is entrancing and almost uncannily soothing. “Welcome to you, both young and old/We are ever new, we are ever new,” Glenn-Copeland softly warbles, a beacon of safety and possibility. The original album, now released on CD and vinyl for the first time, was followed by a collection of remixes and reinterpretations by acolytes, most notably Kelsey Lu’s ecstatically elegiac take on “Ever New.” CARAMANICAGeorge Harrison, ‘All Things Must Pass (50th Anniversary Edition)’(Capitol/UMe; Uber Deluxe Box, $999.98; Super Deluxe Box with eight LPs, $199.98, or five CDs, $149.98; other configurations from $19.98 to $89.98)Seek out the discs featuring 42 previously unreleased demos from George Harrison’s solo debut, “All Things Must Pass.”Anyone who has watched “Get Back” knows how creatively stifled George Harrison was feeling in the final days of the Beatles. His first post-Fab Four solo album, the sprawling, tenderly spiritual masterwork “All Things Must Pass” from 1970, became a repository for all those pent-up ideas. The joy of creation is palpable throughout the 50th anniversary deluxe edition of the album, which features a meticulous and punchy new mix derived from the original tapes by Paul Hicks. The set’s most revelatory material is on the discs featuring 42 previously unreleased demos, which strip Harrison’s compositions down to their bare essentials and showcase the almost otherworldly outpouring of song-craft that accompanied his musical liberation. This season of retroactive Beatlemania is the perfect opportunity for a deep dive into Harrison’s long-gestating opus — consider it “Get Back,” Part 4. ZOLADZ‘It’s a Good, Good Feeling: The Latin Soul of Fania Records (The Singles)’(Craft Latino; four CDs, one 7” vinyl record, $63.98; two LPs, $29.98)While it was on its way to becoming New York salsa’s equivalent of Motown Records, Fania was also helping to boost the Latin-soul hybrid known as boogaloo. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Fania put out a stream of albums and singles with English-language lyrics, mixing funk, rock ’n’ roll and son rhythms; dollops of doo-wop vocals; and more than enough cowbell. This box culls together 89 such singles that Fania released between 1965 and 1975; most weren’t hits, but plenty were by hitmakers: Ray Barretto (whose smash “El Watusi” had presaged boogaloo), Joe Bataan, Willie Colón. Boogaloo could sometimes feel like a fusion of related but not directly compatible parts (“Everybody gather ’round,/I’m gonna introduce the Latin soul sound,” Joe Bataan sings, with something of a heavy hand, on “Latin Soul Square Dance”), but some of the most fun to be had here is on the covers of pop and soul hits sprinkled throughout, which embrace the task directly: Larry Harlow’s orchestra covering “Grazing in the Grass,” Harvey Averne’s take on “Stand,” Joe Bataan’s “Shaft.” The LP version of the box is abridged, including 28 tracks across two discs. RUSSONELLOThe KLF, ‘Solid State Logik 1’(Streaming services)In 1992, the KLF — the British Dada prankster dance-music anarchists who had become global hitmakers in the previous two years — fired machine-gun blanks at the audience at the BRIT Awards and announced their retirement from the music business. Shortly thereafter, they took their whole catalog out of print and, later, burned one million pounds in royalty payment cash. So it’s cause for excitement, and perhaps skepticism, that the group’s catalog began to trickle onto streaming services this year. Most crucial is the compilation “Solid State Logik 1,” which contains all the stratospheric, ornate, deeply ambitious hits: the spooky “What Time Is Love? (Live at Trancentral),” the ecstatic and triumphant “3 a.m. Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.)” and “Justified & Ancient,” with those Tammy Wynette vocals that still, three decades on, are disorienting in just the right way. Is the reissue series a scam? A prelude to a prank? Or a concession to permanence from a musical act that seemed content to live on only as a memory? CARAMANICANirvana, ‘Nevermind: 30th Anniversary (Super Deluxe Edition)’(Geffen; five CDs, one Blu-ray videodisc and hardcover book, $200)A 30th-anniversary edition of “Nevermind” features four concert recordings from 1991 and 1992.GeffenAs if Nirvana ever had to, it proves its punk bona fides yet again with the 30th-anniversary expansion of “Nevermind.” The newly remastered album adds a little additional clarity that brings out both the songs’ pop structures and the rasp and yowl of Kurt Cobain’s voice. It’s packaged with four live concert recordings of variable fidelity from 1991 and 1992 — Amsterdam (included as both audio and video), Melbourne and nearly mono-sounding sets from Del Mar, Calif., and Tokyo — that show Nirvana bashing the music out night after night, screaming and blaring, overloading with physical impact and probably spurring some wild mosh pits. Wherever the tour led, as Cobain sang, there was “no recess.” But the 20th-anniversary “Nevermind” box, in 2011, included a better-sounding 1991 concert, “Live at the Paramount,” and more rarities. PARELESOutkast, ‘ATLiens (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)’(Legacy Recordings/Sony Music; four LPs, $69.98)A sublimely sinuous Southern funk album full of jackhammer rhymes, “ATLiens,” the second Outkast album, from 1996, is perhaps the duo’s most overlooked from its pre-pop-breakthrough era — not the scrappy statement of purpose that preceded it (the 1994 debut, “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik”) nor the psych-rock philosophy lesson that followed (“Aquemini,” from 1998). But it’s crucial to the Outkast worldview formation — it shows the duo both at ease with the languor of laid-back Southern production but also champing at the bit to incorporate small moments of explosion. This release includes the original album alongside, for the first time, the full set of instrumentals. CARAMANICA‘R&B in DC 1940-1960’(Bear Family; 16 CDs, $273.04)Probably the heavyweight champion of boxed sets this year (it weighs 10 pounds), “R&B in DC 1940-1960” collects nearly 500 singles recorded in the nation’s capital back when doo-wop, mambo, early rock ’n’ roll, jump blues and big-band jazz were first being lumped together in the pages of trade magazines into a category called “R&B.” It’s all contextualized engagingly in a 352-page book, full of closely researched history, images and song-by-song notes. You can tease out the presence of some major figures and themes: Marvin Gaye lingers in the backing vocals on at least one track; his mentor, Bo Diddley, also makes an appearance; the recordings of the Clovers and Ruth Brown, as the notes attest, played a role in keeping Atlantic Records afloat in the label’s fledgling days. But the point of this collection is to get you to listen more broadly, and more completely, to an entire musical and social moment: Jay Bruder, the researcher who compiled the collection, wisely included commercials, jingles and other radio-broadcast ephemera in this collection. These are the sounds of Washington in the midcentury, when it was home to one of the country’s most thriving Black middle classes and an incubator of musical talent to match. RUSSONELLORadiohead, ‘Kid A Mnesia’(XL; three CDs, $23; three LPs, $60)Radiohead dig out songs that didn’t make the cut for “Kid A” or “Amnesia” on a new box taking in both releases.Radiohead thoroughly dismantled its rock reflexes to make “Kid A” (2000) and “Amnesiac” (2001), two albums drawn almost entirely from the same sessions. Its former arena-rock guitars and anthemic choruses receded behind fragments, loops, electronic beats, orchestral experiments and ominous noises; disquiet and malaise floated free. “Kid A Mnesia” unites the two companion albums and adds a disc of alternate takes, stray instrumental tracks and songs Radiohead had not quite committed to disc: “Follow Me Around” and “If You Say the Word.” They’re not revelations, but they extend the mood. PARELESThe Replacements, ‘Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take out the Trash (Deluxe Edition)’(Rhino; four CDs, one LP, one 7,” $79.98)Snarling, thrashing and defiantly tuneful, the Replacements’ 1981 debut album, “Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash,” has always sounded like a power-pop LP stuffed into a blender and flicked on to high. But this comprehensive, 40th-anniversary deluxe edition is a sustained reminder of the craft and winning chemistry behind an album that was never quite as anarchically tossed-off as it seemed. Across 100 tracks — 67 of them previously unreleased — it becomes clear that the sturdy melodic core of Paul Westerberg’s songwriting and the ramshackle fury of Bob Stinson’s solos were present from the earliest days of the Minneapolis band’s existence. Some of the most fascinating tracks on this reissue, though, point to where the Replacements were headed on “Let It Be” from 1984 and beyond: A handful of Westerberg’s solo home demos, the best of which is the gut-wrenching “You’re Getting Married,” foreshadow the ragged-heart balladry of a ’Mats classic like “Answering Machine.” Nearly four hours of material is plenty to sift through, but a high percentage of this “Trash” is treasure. ZOLADZThe Rolling Stones, ‘Tattoo You’(Interscope; four CDs, picture disc and hardcover book, $150; five LPs and hardcover book, $198; two CDs, $20)Beyond the kick of “Start Me Up” and the unexpected tenderness (and Sonny Rollins saxophone solo) of “Waiting for a Friend,” “Tattoo You” (1981) was a second-tier Rolling Stones album: vigorous performances of merely passable material. With band members estranged, it was built largely by finishing lyrics and vocals atop outtakes from previous albums. Its 40th-anniversary expanded version includes nine previously unreleased songs that casually continue the album’s 1981 strategy, revisiting tracks from the vault; Mick Jagger sings some obviously anachronistic lyrics in songs like “It’s a Lie,” which mentions eBay. (More deluxe versions add a two-CD 1982 Wembley concert recording.) The new tracks offer familiar pleasures: hearing the band romp through every song. PARELESNina Simone, ‘The Montreux Years’(BMG; two LPs, $29.99; two CDs, $19.98)Between 1968 and 1990, Nina Simone played the Montreux Jazz Festival five times.The most arresting scene in Liz Garbus’s 2015 Netflix documentary “What Happened, Miss Simone?” is a performance from the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, during which a weary but incandescent Nina Simone performs her interpretation of Janis Ian’s “Stars.” Simone’s reading is one of the most damning and deeply felt critiques of fame I have ever heard — and luckily it is featured on “Nina Simone: The Montreux Years,” a new and beautifully packaged two-album collection of live material. Between 1968 and 1990, Simone played the Swiss jazz festival five times; each performance was both a reflection of a specific moment in her career and a testament to her continued virtuosity. For all her ambivalence about jazz festivals and her noted preference for performing in classical music halls, Simone clearly had a special connection to Montreux and, as this collection attests, brought her best to its stage decade after decade. ZOLADZWadada Leo Smith’s Great Lakes Quartet, ‘The Chicago Symphonies’(TUM; four CDs, $71.99)The trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith turned 80 this month but continues to compose and perform prolifically. And his projects have only been growing grander in scale, while still centering his stark, epigrammatic style of playing and writing. Smith’s latest effort (it isn’t an archival recording) is “The Chicago Symphonies,” four extended works, carefully composed but minimalist in craft, written not for an orchestra but for a quartet: the Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Threadgill on alto saxophone, John Lindberg on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. (The saxophonist Jonathon Haffner replaces Threadgill on the fourth and final symphony.) It’s the same group that was featured on Smith’s celebrated “Great Lakes Suite,” from 2014. This new collection of music is dedicated not to the natural beauty of the region, but to the lives of great Midwesterners, from politicians like Abe Lincoln and Barack Obama to Smith’s own colleagues in the avant-garde. The simpatico between Smith and Threadgill is an exciting and rarely documented thing, and it gives these already spellbinding compositions the allure of a privileged conversation. RUSSONELLOThe Who, ‘The Who Sell Out (Super Deluxe Box Set)’(UMe/Polydor; five CDs, two 7” singles, hardcover book, memorabilia, $139)A new boxed set pulls together the Who’s scattered trove of recordings from 1967-69.The Who tried multiple directions while writing and recording “The Who Sell Out,” amid tour dates and the general psychedelic ferment of 1967. Pete Townshend was coming up with character sketches, expanding songs toward mini-operas and layering voices and instruments ever more ingeniously. To hold together its hodgepodge of songs, “The Who Sell Out” was sequenced as a pirate radio show, including jingles and parody commercials. The boxed set pulls together the Who’s scattered trove of recordings from 1967-69. It expands the original album (in mono and stereo versions, plus non-album singles) with three discs of recordings from 1967-68 along with sketches that Townshend would mine for “Tommy” in 1969 and, newly unveiled, a dozen of Townshend’s increasingly ambitious demos, including a thoroughly unrelaxed “Relax” and a smoldering, baleful “I Can See for Miles” that fully maps out the album version, which would be one of the Who’s pinnacles. PARELES More

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      ‘Ain’t Too Proud’ to Close on Broadway as Covid-19 Takes Its Toll

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      The jukebox musical about the powerhouse Motown group will end its run on Jan. 16. It is now the fourth show to announce a closing in the last eight days.“Ain’t Too Proud,” a jukebox musical about the Temptations that opened on Broadway in early 2019, will close on Jan. 16, the show’s producers said on Tuesday.The musical is the fourth Broadway show to announce a closing in the last eight days, as the spike in coronavirus cases from the Omicron variant has exacerbated the financial woes of an already pandemic-damaged theater industry.Last week, the musicals “Jagged Little Pill” and “Waitress,” as well as the play “Thoughts of a Colored Man” announced that they had closed without so much as a farewell performance — all were already on hiatus because of coronavirus cases among cast or crew.The Broadway production of “Ain’t Too Proud,” about the powerhouse Motown group, has not run since Dec. 15, citing coronavirus cases. It is planning to resume on Tuesday, Dec. 28, and hoping to run for three more weeks before closing for good.The musical also has a touring production that had to postpone shows at the Kennedy Center in Washington because of coronavirus cases; it is scheduled to have its delayed start on Tuesday night, as well.“Ain’t Too Proud” had a yearlong prepandemic run, opening in March 2019 to a positive review in The New York Times, where the critic Ben Brantley wrote, “While honoring all the expected biomusical clichés, which include rolling out its subjects’ greatest hits in brisk and sometimes too fragmented succession, this production refreshingly emphasizes the improbable triumph of rough, combustible parts assembled into glistening smoothness.”After the lengthy Broadway shutdown, “Ain’t Too Proud” resumed performances on Oct. 16; because the Broadway League is no longer releasing box office grosses for individual productions, it is not clear how the show has been doing over the last two months. The production received a $10 million Shuttered Venue Operators Grant as pandemic emergency assistance from the U.S. Small Business Administration.The musical won a Tony Award for its choreography by Sergio Trujillo; it features a book by Dominique Morisseau and direction by Des McAnuff, and the lead producers are Ira Pittelman and Tom Hulce. The show was capitalized for $16.75 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; it successfully recouped that investment, according to a spokesman. More